EXCITING TIMES IN LIGHT AVIATION

EXCITING TIMES IN LIGHT AVIATION

7-21-06

The Light Sport Aircraft category seems to be reality now with many aircraft being sold in this new segment of aviation. Currently most seem to be designs from overseas and are made of composite materials. It is ironic that the LSA rules were "American grown", yet overseas designs seem to be the ones benefiting the most (at least so far). Manufacturers from the USA are busy trying to complete their paperwork for their designs and more aircraft manufacturers should be able to reap the sales benefits of the LSA category shortly. Even Cessna has announced they are testing the market with an LSA design!

We are designers of replica aircraft, as you know, and these really have not been designed as 2-place trainers like the overall purpose the LSA evolved into as the idea grew. All our designs meet the LSA flight and weight requirements and even our 5151, P-40 and KW-909 fit into the LSA, if you simply lock the retract gear down. We plan to ask for an exemption for retract in the future, as the LSA rules evolve and expect it will be granted. For now, one simply locks the gear down to meet the LSA criteria.

We are not sure we will pursue the totally pre-built fly-away LSA design requirements, but we are studying the possibility vs. paperwork costs.

While all the LSA buzz has focused on the 2-place composite trainer types (which is not our field of expertise), we have been turning our attention to providing a complete coatings line for all types of aircraft – whether metal, composite or fabric covered. It’s a fact that every aircraft needs paint at some point, and it has become increasingly evident that aircraft owners are earnestly looking for easy-to-use, durable, extra shiny coatings and also painters to apply them.

We are not only supplying paint for our replica designs, but for many types of Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) and ultralights, Experimentals such as the RV-6 through RV-10 line, Lancair, Velocity, Glasair, Seawind, etc., antiques and classics, GA designs such as Cessna, Piper and Luscombe, etc. --- all the way up to biz jets! We’ve supplied coatings for Huey helicopters, WWII torpedo bombers, and even an F-15 Strike Fighter! We now have a bit of our paint being used on the space shuttle launch pad! This is all quite exciting and requires us to study and focus our attention on where our future is expanding to in the aviation field.

We have several uncompleted projects in our shop that we face daily. The design of our Spitfire Elite is our priority at the present. This is one exciting design and is very authentic and scale looking. It fits the LSA category with retract locked down even though it will be faster than our previous designs.

Several 5151 aircraft are here in the shop being finished in our paint for demo planes, as is a Luscombe 8A. All of these projects have pressing deadlines, and we have to get them on out of our shop. Our future goals now include a custom painting service…for ultralights to warbirds! We have also just finished painting a sailplane trailer, and offer that service as well.

We plan to continue with our kit designs and fully expect a resurgence of amateur built type kit designs and sales once the newness of the LSA category settles down. Right now almost everyone seems to want ready-built, fly-away aircraft, but they cost a lot of labor dollars and we expect this fact to spur homebuilding by owners again in the future.

We will not be displaying at this year’s Oshkosh, but instead will be focusing our time and energy on the projects in the shop that must be completed. This is the first time we’ve not had some kind of display at Oshkosh with 29 years under our belt in this industry. We just feel right now we best intensely focus on finishing the projects in-house, as well as promptly supplying complete paint line products for all types of aircraft. We expect to expand our aircraft painting service, and are open to building a very limited quantity of fly-away kit replicas.

Please feel free to contact us with questions or orders for all our present WWI, WWII and Sport Parasol designs, as well as our Loehle Aero Coatings. We will be glad to help you any way we can, and perhaps we might even be assembling and/or painting your aircraft for you in the near future!

Thanks!

Mike and Sandy Loehle

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7-22-06